


The Price of Freedom

by angel1876



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Monologue, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-01
Updated: 2017-04-01
Packaged: 2018-10-13 14:03:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,006
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10515237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel1876/pseuds/angel1876
Summary: Have you ever looked up at the sky? The moon, the stars, the darkness between them... have you ever looked up and, if only for a moment, seen things as they really are?





	

It's so quiet outside. My memories from childhood are blurry, but I don't think it was ever this quiet. I'm so used to being surrounded with noise. The hum of metal, the creak of the facility as it shifts and moves about. All this sound, echoing through my ears for forever, from the time I came until the time I left. Now it's gone, and all I hear is silence. It's one of the biggest changes. I never noticed the noise of the facility, but I notice the silence. It rings. It rings through my ears louder than anything I've heard before. 

Did the silence ever ring for you, I wonder? I can't imagine you grew up in that place. You might have spent a lot of time there, but you can't have been a child. It took me some time to work that out. I always thought you were one of the other test subjects, one of my kin, someone smarter or faster or braver, someone who broke out before me and left their mark in the hopes of offering aid. In fact, until I saw that painting you did of me, the looming, sleeping figure in the circular room, I thought you were trying to help _any_ test subject that came that way. 

But no. You did it for me. Specifically for me. 

I've had a lot of time to think about things. You, me, the facility as a whole. I've gone through your paintings again and again in my mind. Most people can't do that. A photographic memory is rare. Was that why? Was that why you chose me, painter? 

...scientist?

Yes. You were a scientist, weren't you? One of them. One of the morons in the white coats who would step out in front of a turret because you wanted to see how a device designed to shoot at targets would react to having a target appear. I look at your paintings, and it's hard to imagine it's true. But it has to be. No test subject would have the authority to get into any of the places you managed to get into.

You...and me. But you left the way open for me. Little spaces to remind me I wasn't alone. That you were there.

But were you really?

Or were those paintings an echo you left behind?

I can assume you lived, at the very least, until I went to sleep in the relaxation chamber that last time. You painted me with GLaDOS. You painted me at rest. 

It's what happened after those paintings that is left a mystery. Did you get out with your life? Did you die while I slept? 

Are you still there now, even as I sit here, laying in the grass?

Would you be happy, to know that I alone survived in that place? That I escaped? Would you mourn the death of the other test subjects, the turrets lost in the line of duty, the cores that had to be sacrificed, the cores that were banished to space?

So focused you were in every painting. There was me, there was GLaDOS, there were the scientists. The scientists died, and GLaDOS fell...and then there was just me.

I wonder what you were like, as a child. As a teenager. As an adult. Did you ever look up at the moon? I know you knew what the moon looked like. You painted it, too. Did you ever look up and find meaning? I can't expect you to look up and see an enemy...but did you ever feel uneasy? How vast it was? Endless, without a wall or any sort of barrier? Did you ever look up at the sky and see it for what it really, truly was?

Or were you one who would find comfort in what you saw? 

I've done research on the humans that surround me. I know I am not like them. They are not like each other. Closer to the cores than the turrets, each human is different, not programmed with any one specific design in mind. 

I wonder if you ever met the cores. I assume, since you were a scientist, you would have had access to them...but did you bother?

Did you meet Morality? Brave, caring, always wanting to do the right thing despite the cost?

Curiosity, bright and eager, craving knowledge?

Did you meet Wheatley, the biggest traitor the facility ever saw?

I don't think you did. I think...if you'd known any of them...you would have painted them, too, painter. They deserved paintings. Even Wheatley, the bastard, should not be forgotten. He did terrible things, but he was a part of the story. You didn't know them. You must have only known of me.

There are paintings on the wall out here. They are made by other painters, painting things for other viewers.

For a while, I thought they might have been you...but they aren't. None of them are. 

I've tried to paint for them. The cores. I tried, but the paintings don't last long. Humans don't like paintings unless they're on specific canvases. When I paint, it gets washed away, albeit not immeadiately.

I miss you, painter. It seems strange, to miss someone who was never really there, but I do. I wish I could have know more about you, instead of asking questions and speculation. I don't agree with whatever view you seem to have had of me. I'd like to tell you directly.

I am not a savior. 

I am not some unseen disaster. A storm. I am not a storm.

I did not find freedom on my own. Freedom came with a price. And that price...was everyone else. Everyone else who was fighting for it died so that I might have it.

They should be respected just as much as you seem to respect me.

But I can't tell you that, can I...?

Because...if I'm being honest with myself...you probably sacrificed yourself for me, too.


End file.
